Flora Blackford had needed a while to get used to picking up the Philadelphia Inquirer and reading good news day after day. It seemed strange, unnatural, almost un-American. But instead of stories of disaster in Ohio and retreat in Pennsylvania, the paper was full of the U.S. drive through Kentucky and Tennessee, and of other progress elsewhere. By everything she could tell, U.S. bombers were hitting Richmond harder than the Confederates were hitting Philadelphia these days. New U.S. airstrips farther south meant Birmingham and Atlanta were starting to catch it, too.

Even the news west of the Mississippi seemed good, though it often got shoved back to page four or page six. Out in Texas, Abner Dowling was quoted as saying, “With more men, I could move even faster.”

Flora wanted General Dowling’s army to move faster. If U.S. soldiers could walk into Camp Determination, or could even take closeups of the vast boneyard where Jake Featherston’s men disposed of dead Negroes, the world would have to sit up and take notice…wouldn’t it?

She wished she hadn’t had that last little afterthought. When the Tsar turned the Cossacks loose on the Jews in another pogrom, did the world sit up and take notice? When the Turks enjoyed their ancient sport of slaughtering Armenians, did the world try to stop them? When the Germans treated the blacks in the Congo even worse than the Belgians had, did anybody get up on his hind legs and complain?

No, and no, and no. So why would the world flabble unduly-or at all-about what the Confederates were doing to their own people?

“To hell with the world, then,” Flora said, there in the more-or-less privacy of her office. “I care, whether it does or not.”

Her secretary stuck her head into the office. “Did you call me, Congresswoman?”

“No, Bertha. It’s all right,” Flora said. The other woman retreated. Flora shook her head. It wasn’t all right, or even close to all right. And if the world didn’t care, wasn’t that a sign something was wrong with the poor old globe?

She looked at the newspaper again. Why should Dowling complain that he didn’t have enough men? He was doing something vitally important. Shouldn’t he get all the soldiers he wanted, and more besides?

Her first impulse was to summon the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War and hold the General Staff’s toes to the fire. In 1941, she would have done it. She still might do it, but she’d learned other tricks since then. She called the Assistant Secretary of War instead.

“Hello, Flora!” Franklin Roosevelt boomed when she got through to him. “Let me guess-you’re going to want me to send about six divisions to west Texas, and to have them all there yesterday.”

“Well-yes.” Flora didn’t like being so predictable. “And now you’re going to tell me why you claim you can’t do it.”

“Simplest reason in the world: we need ’em more farther east,” Roosevelt said. “If they go to Kentucky and Tennessee, they gut the Confederacy. Gut it, I say. If I send them out to Abner Dowling, they step on its toes. That will hurt, no doubt about it. But it won’t kill, and we want the CSA dead.”

“Sending troops to Texas will stop Jake Featherston from murdering Negroes,” Flora said.

“Sending troops to Texas will stop Jake Featherston from murdering Negroes…at Camp Determination,” Roosevelt said. “It won’t do a damn thing-excuse me, but it won’t-to stop him from murdering them in Louisiana or Mississippi or east Texas. The only thing that will keep him from murdering them there is knocking the Confederate States flat. Taking land away from the enemy, taking away his factories and his railroads and his highways-that will stop him.”

He made more sense than she wished he did. “Is there any way we can compromise?” Flora asked. “I can see why you don’t want to send a lot of men and a lot of equipment to Texas. I don’t like it, but I can see it. Can you send some, though? The Confederates are bound to be having a hard time out there, too. Even a small reinforcement could tip the balance our way.”

“You’re very persuasive. You ought to be in Congress.” Roosevelt laughed merrily. “Tell you what I’ll do. Let me talk to the gentlemen with the stars on their shoulder straps. What they say we can afford, we’ll send. If they say we can’t afford anything-”

“They can come before the Joint Committee and explain why not.” Flora reminded him she had the stick as well as the carrot.

He only laughed again. “You’re very persuasive,” he said. “I suspect you may squeeze a few soldiers out of them after all.”

Flora suspected she might squeeze out some soldiers, too. Generals were often happier facing amputation without anesthesia than they were about coming before the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. Amputation only cost you your leg, not your career, and the pain didn’t last nearly so long.

“Anything else?” Franklin Roosevelt asked.

“How’s the other business doing?” Flora wouldn’t go into detail or name names over the telephone. Lines into and out of Congress and into and out of the War Department were supposed to be extra secure. Some things were too important to entrust to a line that was supposed to be secure, though. She still couldn’t be sure who besides Roosevelt was listening.

He was equally careful, saying only, “Everything seems to be coming along well enough right now.”

“That’s good. They’ve made all the repairs they need?”

“I haven’t heard anything different.”

“All right. Anything new from the foreign factories?” Flora hoped he would understand she was asking how the Confederacy and Germany and England and France-and Russia and Japan, too, come to that-were faring in their quest for a uranium bomb.

“I haven’t heard anything new lately,” he replied. “Of course, just because I haven’t heard it, that doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened.”

“I know,” she said unhappily. That was true even of the Confederates’ project, and they were right across the border and spoke the same language. How much could the USA find out about what the Germans, say, were doing? They were allies, but they were being tight-lipped about anything that had to do with uranium. The Russians and the Japanese were probably behind in the race-Flora hoped they were, anyway-but she didn’t see how her country could learn anything about what they were doing unless they got amazingly careless with their codes.

“If I hear anything, you’ll know about it,” Roosevelt promised, and then, “Oh, that reminds me.”

Did he sound a little too casual? Flora thought he did. “Reminds you of what?” she asked, trying not to show it.

“I’d like to send a team to your office and to your apartment, to sweep them for microphones,” he said. “Don’t want to take chances, you know.”

“No, I suppose not.” Flora sighed. “All right-go ahead.” Of course, the Confederates-or any other spies-could plant mikes again right after the inspection team finished. A whore might be healthy when a government doctor looked her over, then catch something nasty from her next customer and spread it till she was inspected again. In both cases, though, you had to try.

“Thanks, Flora. The leader of the team is a master sergeant named Bernstein. If he’s not there, go somewhere else and call the guards.”

“Will do,” Flora said. “’Bye.” She hung up.

The team showed up at her office the next morning. She exchanged Yiddish gibes with Sergeant Bernstein. If he was by any chance a Confederate spy, he was a brilliant one. Bertha squawked when he and his men ran their detectors over her desk. “Sorry, lady. Gotta be done,” he said. “Anything, Bob?” he asked the tall, blond soldier who was checking there.

“Looks like zip, Carl,” the private answered. He towered over his boss, who was little and dark and probably hadn’t combed his hair in three or four days.